Constantine and Eusebius

by Timothy D. Barnes

This study of the Roman Empire in the age of Constantine offers a thoroughly new assessment of the part Christianity played in the Roman world of the third and fourth centuries.

Timothy D. Barnes gives the fullest available narrative history of the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. He analyzes Constantine’s rise to power and his government, demonstrating how Constantine’s sincere adherence to Christianity advanced his political aims. He explores the whole range of Eusebius’ writings, especially those composed before Constantine became emperor, and shows that many attitudes usually deemed typical of the “Constantinian revolution” were prevalent before the new Christian empire came into existence. This authoritative political and cultural history of the age of Constantine will prove essential to students and historians of the ancient world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Church History, Christian History, Ancient History

466 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 1981

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the foremost scholars of Constantine's reign seeks to improve on Edward Gibbon's eighteenth-century ambition to achieve a "just portrait" of Constantine. In contrast to most writing on Constantine throughout the centuries, Barnes' interpretation describes an emperor who was neither tyrant nor saint, who established Christianity as the official religion of the empire by suppressing Jews and pagans, who preserved and modified rather than revolutionized the imperial office and its traditions (with the notable exception in connection with pagan sacrifice, which he totally abolished). In effect, Constantine emerges as a genuine, but flawed Christian convert who remained a typical Roman emperor but who was driven by the conviction that he was divinely appointed to convert the Empire to Christianity.

Barnes also plunges the full range of works by Eusebius of Caesarea, producing a nuanced portrait of our main source on Constantine as well as the emperor himself. Multiple myths about both men are dispelled, not least those which each man preferred others to believe about himself.

While it is a work with which any student of late antiquity in general or Constantine in particular needs to be well-acquainted with, Barnes' taste for nuance does not avoid the exaggeration that Constantine established Christianity as the official religion (that was his successor, Theodosius I, in 381, who was more radical than Constantine ever was). He also fails to deal with or integrate his interpretation in light of the lack of a distinction between religious and secular matters, a major of fault of perhaps all interpreters of Constantine since the Enlightenment - one which seems all but inescapable for contemporary scholars.

Unlike many contemporary writers, Barnes integrates theology into history with a level of competence surprising for a non-Christian, non-theologian. History and theology are inextricable in much of Barnes' account, and the author recognizes how history and theology drive one another during the emperor's reign.

See Barnes' 2013 follow-up entitled Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire for both a self-critique and affirmation of this earlier major work from 1981.

[Martijn Verbruggen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eusibus gives a insightfull look on the theological questions of a trinity, and all the believes in these times, meanwhile you have constantine the great christian emperror for the roman empire who stops the persecution of the christian he declares a period of time in which they can put in practice of the religion,

[Tyson Guthrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Literarily: Barnes can assemble an engaging narrative from good historical sources (3 stars), but the book desperately needs an introduction. It's difficult to find a thesis succinctly and clearly stated anywhere (minus 1 star).
Historically: Depicting Athanasius as the head of an "ecclesiastical mafia" is extreme even for revisionist historians of the fourth century (minus another star).

[Nate Padley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an extremely informative, though admittedly very dry, account of Constantine and the politics of the fourth century church. Barnes treats Constantine’s conversion with the credulity that it deserves. I love Constantine, and I’m glad to see a respected classicist defending him.